Welcome to Café Lopez’s very first “In the Biz.” Every Wednesday, we’re going to feature someone new to get a freshperspective on writing by way of five direct questions relating to the business. Today, we’ll be interviewing Suzanne H. Patton. When I first met Suzanne here at the Café, I was immediately impressed with her passionate, articulate, and thought-provoking responses to previous posts. Imagine my surprise when I discovered she’s only 19! The surprises didn’t end there. Suzanne is also a moderator at the Young Writers Society, part of the writing duo at Two Swords, One Pen, and is embarking on an exciting quest to write a novel on a typewriter in her newest blog, The Ink Ribbon Writer. If anyone can be said to embody youthful exuberance, it’s her. Now on to the interview! (more…)

Micro-brews. Expertly crafted pints of intoxicatingly delicious cerveza (yes, I just used a different language to avoid a future redundancy. Is that allowed?). My best friend and I had a couple of beers last night, and I can’t tell you how rejuvenated I feel right now. I wonder why that is? Our usual nights involve darts and lagers (cheap, American lagers), which are fun, but not quite as satisfying. Is that how people feel when they read genre fiction. And if so, what’s that like?

“Oh man, that was a whoot, but I need to get a literary fix quick or else my brain is going to rot.”

It’s been three years since I started writing The Dead Don’t Cry, three years since I’ve really had to think about my elusive friend, the plot. The last time I wrote about him, I talked about delving into the minds of your characters, letting them do all the legwork. Useful as that can be, the actual art tends to be a bit more gritty, considerably more hands on. We’ve all heard the saying: there’s a story in each and every one of us. What no one told us was just how piecemeal that story actually is. (more…)